The Fatal Design Flaw In Hitler's Atlantic Wall
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- čas přidán 8. 03. 2022
- 'The Fatal Design Flaw In Hitler's Atlantic Wall'
War historian James Rogers heads to Esbjerg in Denmark to see the remains of hundreds of Second World War bunkers, constructed as part of Hitler's Atlantic Wall defences when the country was occupies by Nazi Germany.
There are many traces of the Atlantic Wall along the coast of the Wadden Sea. Denmark's largest shore battery was located here, along with several smaller battery positions. The bunkers also had a number of other functions such as radar stations, listening posts or command centres.
James looks into the design flaws of the Atlantic Wall project, which stretched from the North Cape in the Norway to the Pyrenees. Hitler believed it would make an Allied invasion of occupied Europe impossible. But experienced German generals, including Erwin Rommel who would oversee the latter stages of the project, saw that the costly defences were spread too thinly to be effective.
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Eighty years later its easy to say that "fixed fortifications are dumb," but the narrator leaves out the point of WHY Rommel did not want any landing to succeed-- that being that the Allied air superiority would ensure the invasion's success if the landing went ok and that Germany had nothing to counter that. Speer, if you read his book, complained about the Wall not because of its military value, but because resources were being taken away from his projects. Lastly, a little bit too much glossing over Nazi use of slave labor. Some numbers around how much of this was used would give it context and scope.
I always wondered why the military that exploited the weaknesses of the Maginot line would themselves use an "out-dated" strategy.
It would have worked remember Dieppe, another thing Rommel wanted to send his heavy panzer in, as soon as he found out about the invasion.
Hitler gave orders he wasn't to be wakened from sleeping, if he had done this D day would have been different.
@@fucker1714 Hitler liked to think of himself as a talented military tactician, which he wasn't, and his megalomania wouldn't let him defer to the expert career generals in his High Command. They learned to tread carefully when attempting to advise him uninvited or ameliorate his positions because they didn't want to trigger his wrath. We're very lucky that no-one was successful in assassinating him, since his own unforced errors probably knocked a year or two off the duration of the war.
They done a lot of building for a 5 yr war ...is BS
@@RichWoods23 he also thought he was a classical portrait painter.
Shackleton's ship has finally been found, we need that video now!
Ig their making a documentary for nat geo that’s coming later this year which is kinda disappointing🤷🏽♂️
Indeed, we really need it
I just saw it on the news. The Endurance is in remarkably good condition 10,000 feet down.
What a missed opportunity for this channel! Posting a pre-packaged video instead of the breaking news after all the build up on the Shackleton story???
Money talks and BS walks. 😏😖 No different to any other money hungry channel. 🤷♂️ C’mon Dan, be nice! 🧐
congratulations Dan and the entire team on the expedition! last week i was literally thinking there is no way your not going to find that ship is it’s those drones and you did it!!!
what ship? the endurance?
@@vocalthrower448 yes, they found it
"He who defends everywhere defends nothing." - Frederick the Great
As an aging military kid my dad was in WW2 and what he told me hasn't been forgotten in fact it still makes me feel bad and sometimes cry 😢 he lost so many friends during the war and seen things that isn't in the history books that needed to be,but politics was getting powerful so it never made it.
maybe write a book on those stories, keeping them alive for generations to come
@@CarbiesChronicles I don't think they would believe those.
@@cyankirkpatrick5194 Does that matter? If you think they are true, stand by them.
RECORD AS MUCH AUDIO AS YOU CAN WHILE YOU CAN!!! Regardless of truth, it's your elder patriarch, record while you can. You will regret not doing it when he is gone. Don't tell him though, he won't tell you anything. Trust a old grunt, I wish I would have recorded my veteran elders of my family, unfortunately we all got PTSD, including myself.
@@forcesightknight dad has been gone since 2002 I just got the stories with me
Excellent report! It isn't easy to accurately convey a complex topic like the Atlantic Wall in a 13 minute video, as countless WWll videos on YT make abundantly clear. By carefully limiting the scope of the video, and sticking to historical facts, you've contributed a very worthwhile intro to the topic. Kudos!
Well, the facts weren't quite accurate, alas. It's the usual overemphasis on the importance of the Western Front. There was no intent and no reason to "turn the focus back to the west" once the Soviet Union had been vaniquished. The only intent was to keep the Allies out of Europe. Even the oft-discussed Operation Sealion never had the intention to conquer the UK, but to knock it out of the war. Likewise, if there was a singular fatal blow to Hitler, it's called "Stalingrad". But the failure of Case Blue pretty much nailed the coffin already.
Bring on the beautiful footage!! History is History and nice to learn new and old history. What it's was like and what's still remains now. Good Luck and keep us informed!!
While most of the Atlantic Wall emplacements were quickly abandoned after the Normandy landings, defenses centered around critical supply ports would frequently tie up large number of Allied men, equipment and supplies that were needed elsewhere for extended periods before the survivors surrendered. The fanatical defenders of Dunkirk would actually hold out until the day after Germany's surrender (see Mark Felton Productions video on Operation Blucher) and had the supplies to keep fighting for approximately three more months.
You should go check out Hirtshals Bunker museum in north Denmark. Extremely well preserved german installation, complete with ammunition trenches connecting from storages to gun emplacements
45-years ago, I had my 6+month-old son on my chest as I walked a Normandy beach path, visiting two bunkers…the juxtaposition was immense to me. What a waste!
There was a wonderful commercial for the History channel. Scene opens with a mum and a giggling toddler play on a Normandy beach. The scene slowly fades to combat footage from the same location, then fades back to the original mother and child. Very powerful stuff.
Love ur content man
The fatal design flaw I expected to learn about was not, in fact, actually mentioned -- the Atlantic Wall was built with no roof.
I think the Nazis just ran out of concrete for that part
As walls ain’t roofs,disagreed.Don’t take my word for it.Go to wikipedia.org & find “wall” & “roof”.
Isn’t it ironic that the Germans who easily got around the Maginot Line thought that their wall would hold? Lesson there somewhere
They didn't think it would hold. They _knew_ it wouldn't hold. The Nazi leadership was into big lies, and this was one of their biggest.
The Atlantic Wall can't be compared to the many orders of magnitude more sophisticated and effective Maginot Wall. As they say in the video, one important goal when building fortifications is to dictate where the enemy can attack. The Maginot Line prevented the Germans from taking the quick and easy route to Paris and forced them to go through the Low Countries, where the French believed that they, the British, and the Belgians could defeat them. They thought wrong, but the Maginot Line fulfilled its purpose, and nearly five years later fulfilled its purpose again when the US Seventh Army rode out the Nordwind offensive thanks to it. As the Seventh's war diary put it: "[it] showed what a superb fortification it was".
I hear you, but what other choice did Rommel have?
They got around the line. The allies were going to have to go through theirs (and from the sea, which since Gallipoli didn't seem possible, with contested amphibious landings viewed as suicide).
@@Riddim4 I was just meaning that very few walls have ever really worked like they were supposed to. People will find a way. I guess the Berlin Wall held better than any and that was just because it was small and well guarded against unarmed civilians. And yet even then people found a way through that bastard
The other major flaw of the Atlantic Wall was the vast amount of fuel required to produce the cement and steel used in it's production, particularity as the Third Reich was already facing an energy shortage from limited coal production and access to oil.
The Atlantic wall in the Netherlands did see some use in their defense of the Schelde. By failing to overrun Zeeland when Antwerp was liberated (attacking the wall from the rear), the use of a deep-sea port was denied to the Allies a lot longer than necessary. Any ship trying to approach Antwerp was simply blown out of the water by the Wall defenses.
you clearly have knowlege of Denmark (your pronounciation of esbjerg was a give away) its nice to see a historical presentation that includes denmark. keep up the good work
It's ironic that amilitary that famously proved that fixed fortications, in the form of the Frnech Maginot Line, were a thing of the past would resort to fixed fortifications themselves.
The maginot line was designed to buy time for France to properly mobilise, it was not supposed to be impregnable. There was also a lot of cost cutting which made them far less effective in combat.
The maginot could have worked if the Belgian king would have allowed it to extend into Belgium, also the German advance through the Ardennes could have easily been stopped with planes but the french refused to believe their recon
That video was well done!
Fascinated already in the first 5 minutes ….. subbed as well
*Impressive Series* 👌
As Patton said, "Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man." He also liked to remind his troops that if mountains and oceans could be overcome, surely anything built by man could also be overcome!
Fixed fortifications are a perfect solution, right up to the time they meet the enemy.
Patton didn't set foot on the beach untill thousands of grunts made bloody mud out of the sand. He didn't have to overcome much, personally. Sure, he was a bad ass, but almost every grunt is that manages to keep their shorts dry.
Patton was a tactical genius and a strategical idiot. That you can overcome an obstacle in theory is a non-issue. The question is whether the price you'll have to pay is in any way commensurate with a)the strategic value and b)what folks back home are willing to accept.
@@laner989 : What was then in wwl? The frontlines had been, with exeption of Alpine Front, two opossing lines of fieldfortifications.
@@brittakriep2938 The allies developed a method for effective mobilisation, the Germans were defeated shortly after.
Very nice channel I will talk with friends about it.
Thanks that was excellent I love documentarys on WW2..
Great job all! congratulations!
Lol, so many shots of James just walking up to something and patting it 😂
Love this series
Outstanding, simply outstanding historical content.
Except it missed one key point: The wall succeeded admirably in making its breaching incredibly expensive in terms of men and material.
Well done
Well, considering that less than 1% of the project was ever going to be used in combat, the Atlantic Wall was an absurd waste of resources. It would have been infinitely smarter to invest in mobile assets that could deploy to wherever the allies landed than in static defenses almost all of which would inevitably go to waste.
maybe, but the counter point was the coastal defences were not supposed to overturn the allied attack on thier own, but hold it up and slow it down enough for the mobile forces in france, some 11 divisions of panzers and panzer-grenadiers, to counter attack and thrown them back into the sea. In other words, they WERE planning to use mobile forces to counterattack. A key assumption of the german defence strategy was that the allies would NEED to capture a port facility in order to properly supply their troops, so defences were concentrated around ports like Cherbourg, Calais, Dunkrik, etc. agian, the difficulty in supplying troops over open beaches would slow the allied build up and give the germans more time to mass and counterattack.
However, the allies knew this, and made extensive efforts to destroy the transport links up to the theatre, as well as using extensive roving air patrols to shoot up everything that drove in german rear areas. the net result was that the germans struggled to bring thier panzers up to the front, having to road march, and then only at night, and by the time they could get to the front the allies were ashore in strength to great to dislodge.
Rommel, having fought under allied air superiority in north Africa, understood how oppressive it was, but his superiors, used to the eastern front where the soviets could at best contest the airspace, did not. If those divisions had been forward deployed into normandy and calais, they might have had more of an effect, but its unclear, and not certain. the allies would doubtless have changed their plans somewhat if the pazers were concentrated in northern france, by launching the southern France invasion first to try and draw some south, for example.
The allies had also invested HEAVILY in amphibious technology and equipment, stuff like landing ships, the higgins boat or especially the DUKW that could deliver goods form offshore transports directly into supply dumps inland, all of which invalidated the german assumptions about what could be supported over open beaches.
Well the theory is that by merit of the defenses being there as to being absent, the allies would be forced to funnel their invasion to a limited number of landing sites, which could be targeted by entrenched troops(and the limited number of reserve divisions spared the Eastern Front), and that would negate their numerical superiority in an amphibious landing. And it did, for a little while.
No defenses means they can pick the nicest beaches all the way up the coast and land at their leisure, the defenses resulted in the invasion happening later since they had to be accounted for. Some weapons don't need to be used to be useful. Look at nuclear weapons, their mere existence renders their holders basically immune to invasion, nobody wants a nuke in their face, and so they don't engage at all, and the weapons aren't used at all.
Seems the Germans had the best engineering but the worst resource management. Take the incredible Gustav gun. Impressive in every way but, as I understand it, it took thousands of men to lay track, assemble, and defend it, to say nothing about the time required. How many fast, light tanks could have been fielded with those resources? How much more support materiel and food could have been sent to, say, Stalingrad were it not being diverted to the Gustav guns? Imagine if those resources had been dedicated to the Luftwaffe and more accurate, albeit smaller, bombs? I guess it's lucky Hitler was not dissuaded from his apparent bigger-is-better attitude in favor of more efficient plans.
static defenses tend to fail in dynamic wars..
Great clip but maybe a minute to explain the bunkers have fallen onto beaches that once sat above due to erosion. They have moved.
Look at those structures!!! Still has the marks from being fired upon!!!! Wow 😲
Up at "Nørre Vorupør" south of "Hanstholm" (site of enormous guns, they could shoot half the way up to Norway) in Northern Jutland, when on holiday as a child in the 1970's I played in many of these bunkers, it was very exciting.
It would have been better for smaller guns and more of them.
Dear James, where did you get that dope jacket?
Should check out the Channel Islands. Very heavy German defences.
Unfortunately, the only thing that Hitler purely-simply did was to "re-create the Maginot Line," and for exactly the same reasons. "How history repeats itself."
This video contradicts what I studied some years ago in the context of writing of a movie script on the most genial of spies of all time: Juan (Joan) Pujol "Garbo". Although close 2 times, the script didn`t make it. Anyway I did tons of research on "Overlord", "Bodyguard", etc. Whatever Hitler¨s first intentions were, the static defenses were not intended to stop the invasion. NO. Their function was to, primarily, delay the invasion. That is why three complete, fully loaded, Panzer division were close (not to close) and redy to seal the gap made bt the invasion. Think of it as a football or a tire: the panzer divisions were ready to react and seal the puncture. Here comes the genius of "Garbo": his telegram (read to Hitler himself) convinced Hitler to halt the Panzer counterattack who were already on their way towards the landings.
That's what I always believed was the strategy, too. Slow them down, slap them with the SS panzer groups. Fortunately, Allied airpower and resilient ground troops made the SS think twice.
Here's another Hit.... Somewhere in the history books mentioned that they flew gliders over the wall and taken them from behind. Think they needed a higher roof for that
Only having 10% of your front line forces on that front was a pretty vital design error
The rest were in Russia
Hitler: Can you quickly build me coastal defenses!
Todt: Totes, dude!
The problem with static defences is once you get past them they are useless.
He who defends everything defends nothing.
It was never meant to be impenetrable, it was meant to delay the invasion until the panzers could counterattack once the main effort of invasion was established….
When High Command asked that Hitler would release the Panzer tanks to counter-attack the Normandy invasion they were told that Hitler was sleeping and could not be disturbed. As one German General remarked at the time - 'we are going to lose this war because Hitler must not be disturbed'.
@@itsonlycapnkirk
You'll lose a war even faster by not sleeping
The Germans ran out of ammo- Thats It that how the the D Day landings happened. Each MG nest sould have had accsess to 24hrs worth of ammo, but they only had 2hrs to 6hrs worh. Each sector of D-day fell as the ammo ran out. The Bunkers sysem worked-The Logistic failed.
Bullshit whoever gave you that information was not at Normandy beach And you should double check your facts instead of falsifying history And discrediting the men that fought And died there My own grandfather at Juno(mike section) They had a 1 in 2 chance of living in the first hour However into the 2nd hour they were pushing into Bernières And by mid morning it was fully ours ..........And the Canadians found weapons not used Crates of ammo of all sorts. And faced Tanks with shells and Machine guns And members of the SS squadrons under heavy fire And losses was the first to complete all of its objectives .........Further inland was Andaines forest in Normandy Where the Germans had a Fuel/Ammo/Food dump storage for the Juno section with Trucks and trailers Being only 1 hr away at 71kms a hr ..Do you still think my facts would be wrong to say...Hmm the Germans pretty much knew the allied ships were coming And already had More than 2 hours worth of ammo? Because i know having a few thousand rounds You will still need to change out the barrel And have fresh troops take over the dead ones ...They were simply over run
Very good point, a gun is useless without ammo
An unimporant sidenote from Germany: English wall- German Mauer, German Wall- English rampart. The same word ,but a different meaning.. And Reich is not spoken Reik.
@sewagii :
I am not to familiar with english language, so i thought a wall is in english a ,Mauer' made of concrete, stones or bricks, while a ,Wall' made of wood , earth , sandbags or ,unglued' stones ( don' t know english word for Mörtel) is a rampart . ls this wrong?
@sewagii : I am german, so i know, that in case of Westwall or Atlantikwall no Mauer is meant, but a line / system of obstacles, field fortifications and stone/ concrete fortifications. The difference between Mauer and Wall in german (my) language i know, but i was wrong about english language.
"So what you're saying is that broad, static defenses aren't worth the high costs?", asks M. Maginot?
Shame this video isn't more in-depth. Already seen most of this on the -Hitler- History Channel.
Atlantic Wall had no roof! Allied airpower means no daytime movement for reserves
Same as every other seige wall, they dont work well
The flaw was being so hated that no reason would ever exists to stop ending Germany. Simple
Why? no roof!
Well, the fact that more concrete and steel than has ever existed in human history would have been needed to actually seal off _Festung Europa_ was a big factor...
That soldier at 7:32 looks like John Cena
not the hitler voice lmao
As said by some, its a matter of combined arms - in this case, combined defenses. Slow down the invasion, then counterattack. Some generals wanted the Panzers be positioned right behind the beach, while others proposed a in-depth defense. Someone noted: Hitler choose a compromis, wich destroyed the advantages of both opproaches - not sure whether that statement is accurate.
Given the lack of logistics and mobile warfare due to allied air supremacy, a positioning behind the beaches would have been a wise consideration. Also, in simulations Normandy proved to be a weak spot after all. Germans overestimated the allied abilities to also land a force near Calais, and kept some reserves there.
What applied to the maginot line, applied to the Atlantic wall as well: it wasnt a bad idea, but only when additional and correct measures are taken. When the big picture is flawed, any specific part will become useless. Not to mention: different setups would have resulted in a different approach by the Allies. A "what if" consideration can be learnful, but might not result in a different strategic outcome.
the video starts at 1:05
It's almost impossible to defend against the might of Industrial Superiority. Even if the defenders were as disciplined, well trained along with superior weapons and machines as the German Military was.
I wonder how many tanks and heavy weapons Germany could have made instead of the wall(Atlantic and hurtgen).
Never understood why the Germans built defences on the west coast of Denmark. There was never any possibility of the allies invading there and everyone knew the invasion would be in France, just not where in France.
Could have been the Netherlands as well
A massive waste of concrete.
Its hard to believe the atlantic wall was over 3000 miles long. Since we mostly just hear about France where landings took place it doesnt give it the massive defense it really was. Glad it didnt hold up but still an incredible project sadly completed by forced labor.
Europe became one big Singapore.
No defense in depth.
Spoiler you'll have more war memorabilia soon
The only flaw was that he forgot to put a roof on it
Every fixed position defence in history either could be or was defeated.
WW1 trenches weren't completely overcome
There are castles both medieval and ancient which have never fallen to assault. Some did fall due to betrayal or a surrender obliged by defeat in the wider war, or starvation and disease after anything up to twenty years of siege, but there are still a handful which never fell.
@@RichWoods23 OK since the invention of gun powder (very few) fixed fortifications have not been defeated in one way or the another. See The Maginot Line The West Wall Etc. Happy now?
@@fasthracing Yeah, pretty much. Ta!
Yet it kept us out of France in 1943 and pushed us away from taking a port from seaward.
Why is it never cleaned up?
Expensive
And it has little benefit. By now they are effectively just big rocks lying in the beach. So there kind of is nothing to clean up.
a lot of them have been removed as well. take a look a Dutch coastline. Deltaworks, Maasvlakte Rotterdam port area demanded big interventions in landscape
A static army is a defeated army...
Did the allies take a deep water harbo like Cherbourg intact? Was the allies capable of landing in eastern France or west Germany and totaly cut of the German troops in France? So what was the alternative? Leave the beach unfortified?
Nope, Cherbourg was properly destroyed by the Germans. The first deep sea port that got operational was Antwerp. But Montgomery failed to make the liberation of the shipping lane towards Antwerp a priority, allowing the Germans fortified that region. It was taken months later and at a very heavy cost to the Canadians.
That is the second major blunder by Montgomery that lengthened the war by months. A man who is given much more credit than he is due.
Hi 2 Guys.
Magenot line anybody ?
Not a proper comparison as the Germans also fortified Belgium, something the French neglected.
I never knew the Autobarn was created thru the third Reich
Always thoight it was a late 80s/early 90s construction
The Germans thought to build an obstacle and yet man overcomes obstacles. We climb mountains for fun.
I don't know if this has been covered in your videos. I would like to watch a video with a title like, "Hitler does not declare war on America." All that wasted materials and manpower. A good project is one that takes into account three considerations: time, effort, and money.
Well, this had the potential to be really good, but it was kinda spoiled by a presenter who used the word "rike" instead of "Reich".
toad?
Ironically "Todt".
1:45 Hitler was already fighting on two fronts in 1944. Why does _every_ doc about D-Day get that wrong ???
Right, it isn't like the Allies invaded ITALY or anything in 1943. Saying that Normandy was the second front is almost as cringe as saying it was the beginning of the end. I'm pretty sure that Germany failing in Operation Barbarossa was a beginning to the end. Everything the Western Allies did shortened the war but Hitler was going to lose. Russia was bleeding Germany dry of men and resources.
The guy voicing the statements of Germans seems a bit young and unsure of himself to believably portrait German commanders of the word war.
Cue wehraboos ...
_I sort of think Hiltler being in bed until the late afternoon and the landings taking place as a complete surprise in the morning caused some decision paralysis_
Am I stupid ? Where the heck was the announced design flaw ? What did the blabber mouth say new ?
Around the 12 minute mark. Basically the wall was too long and the defences not deep enough
@@kevingarrett2559 And what is new about that? The Nazis and the Allieds knew that from the start.
@@bernardfrederic6535 you asked. I answered.
The Fuhrer seems something of a polymath but likes sleeping in all morning. More concentration camps could have built with the raw meterials.
Like trumps wall, won’t stop anything.
Trump's wall couldn't even stop the wind. LOL
@@timothyhouse1622 -- but I thought he was an expert. lol
The fatal design was not putting a roof over it. Currahee.
This is why we now live in such a terrible world, or at the very least, it was the beginning of it by sugarcoating things.
Meh. Nothing new here
The fake German accent is really offputting
This is why we have such a terrible world now, well it was the start of it by sugarcoating things
That's a bizarre claim to make.
So you would have preferred the Nazis WIN?